K-drama's top superhero alien is the perfect boyfriend

My Love From The Star stars Kim Soo-hyun as a professor from outer space and Gianna Jun as the woman he sets out to protect.

My Love From The Star has swept most of East Asia off its feet with a romantic 17th-century superhuman hero.

Landing in South Korea after a trip to her native China, rapper Meng Jia of K-pop group Miss A shared an observation on Twitter: “Almost all Chinese women want an alien boyfriend.”

To be more precise, the man they and others in East Asia want is from Planet K-drama: Do Min-joon, the ageless professor from outer space played by Kim Soo-hyun in the South Korean television phenomenon My Love From The Star.

He is a guy who has superhuman powers but is more perfect than Superman because he has his priorities right. He wants to protect only one person – the woman in his life, played by Gianna Jun.

My Love From The Star, a romantic fantasy created by writer Park Ji-eun (My Husband Got A Family, 2012), has been trending in East Asia after its debut in December last year.

In China, the show has more than one billion views on video websites such as iQiyi.com and PPS, and Kim Soo-hyun is one of the top searches on Baidu, the country’s equivalent of Google, say reports on news website NetEase. Books read or referenced by Kim’s character in the drama – including a 17th-century Korean fantasy novel, The Cloud Dream Of The Nine, and a 2006 American children’s book, The Miraculous Journey Of Edward Tulane – are out of stock in China, add the reports.

The show is also said to have popularised fried chicken, the comfort food of Jun’s character, and revitalised the country’s H7N9-hit poultry trade.

In South Korea, the show took over from The Inheritors, the SBS teen romance featuring K-drama royalty Lee Min Ho and Park Shin Hye, and raced past it in the ratings. Whereas The Inheritors took 11 episodes to reach 20% of viewers nationwide, My Love From The Star took only four episodes.

A song Kim sang for the show, In Front Of Your House, flew to the top of the country’s music charts two hours after it was released, says entertainment website allkpop. Which is all in a day’s work for the hottest star from South Korea now. – The Straits Times, Singapore/Asia News Network

> My Love From The Star airs every Wednesday and Thursday at 8.55pm on ONE HD (Astro Ch 393).